Chapter 228: The King

"I am Cixi," she introduced herself.

She could not take her eyes off him. Something about his presence had reached inside her chest and turned a dial she did not know existed, and now every part of her attention pointed at him like a compass pointing north.

"Who are you?" she asked.

On the side, Cassian watched Cixi’s reaction, and it was obvious he did not like the way Cixi was reacting, while knowing it wasn’t her fault either.

"You could have waited, The King," Cassian tried to stay polite. His voice was controlleda nd tight.

The King turned his gaze from Cixi to Cassian. His smile did not waver. If anything, it deepened. "You are asking me to —wait?" Each word was placed with the precision of a man who was giving Cassian one chance to reconsider what had just come out of his mouth.

Cassian did not reconsider. "It is rude to barge into a date."

"You weren’t exactly dazzling your date with your responses," the King remarked with amusement. "So, I thought I would step in to lend her a hand." His eyes glinted with mischief, hinting at a cunning intent behind his playful words.

Cassian’s hand curled into a fist at his side. The black veins on his forearm pulsed. "Between a couple, it is not considered elegant to poke your nose, King. I am sure you are very well aware of it."

"Should I be feeling offence for you asking me to leave you two alone?"

He tilted his head to one side, the way a person tilts their head when they hear something genuinely entertaining. A smirk glued itself to his lips and stayed there, permanent and unbothered, the expression of someone who had been asked to leave places far more dangerous than an underwater cave and had never once complied.

"Let me send Cixi back to the room." Cassian hated how the King interrupted their time together. Will he keep doing it? The thought did arrive at once. He needs to talk to the King and draw a line between them.

Meanwhile, he did not want to offend the King. Not with Cixi standing three feet away. Every word he spoke in the King’s presence carried weight, and that weight could land on Cixi if he miscalculated.

"I would prefer she stayed here," the King said smoothly. "And knows exactly whom she is connected to."

Cixi, who had been admiring the man before her with the helpless fascination of someone staring at a painting they cannot look away from, felt the logic side of her brain stir awake. The words settled. ’Knows exactly whom she is connected to.’ That sentence was not casual but carried a purpose.

"She has eyes, and her eyesight is pretty perfect." Cassian widened his hand, gesturing at himself, at the horns, the black veins, the bare torso, the slit eyes. His true form is on full display. "I am right in front of her in my true form."

"She is seeing what you are showing, Cassian." The King’s gaze returned to Cixi. "I have not even introduced myself yet." He looked at Cassian with mild disapproval. "Do not be rude to a lady."

The King walked forward.

Cassian moved with him, shifting his position to stay closer to Cixi, placing himself within arm’s reach of her without making it obvious. The King noticed. Cixi noticed. But neither mentioned it.

"People call me King," he said, and stretched his hand toward her.

"Pleasure to meet you—King." Cixi placed her hand in his.

His fingers closed around hers, and he lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles. The contact lasted a second. Maybe two.

Long enough for Cixi to feel the strange coolness of his skin against hers, a temperature that sat on the opposite end of Cassian’s warmth, as though the two of them had been designed as contrasts.

"Is King your name or title?" Cixi asked as he released her hand.

The King kept the smile on his face. "It is a title." He said nothing more.

The silence invited a follow-up. It was constructed to invite one, the kind of deliberate pause a person leaves when they want to be asked the next question.

"So you are the King," Cixi stressed the words, leaning into them. "Which continent, or should I ask which planet?"

The King laughed. His laugh was magnificent. That was the only word Cixi’s mind produced. Magnificent. It filled the cave the way music fills a cathedral, rich and full and resonant, and it carried no mockery, no cruelty, no edge. It was the laugh of someone who found genuine delight in the question and genuine delight in the person asking it.

Then his laughter settled. His smile remained. "People on this planet know me as the King of Hell!"

Cixi gave a polite, reflexive smile, the kind a person gives when they hear something absurd and assume it is a joke.

King. Of. Hell.

Hell?

Wasn’t a fallen angel supposed to rule Hell?

Banished by heaven.

Her smile faltered at the thought. Her eyes found Cassian, who was in demon form. She looked at Cassian. He was looking at her. His yellow eyes held hers, steady and unreadable.

She looked at the King. He was still smiling.

A crease formed between her brows. "As in the..." She paused, giving some more thought. Started again. "The King of Hell,.... as in hell — like the Hell?" Her voice climbed half a pitch. "The Luuuucifeeer?"

"You passed!" he said, and grinned widely.

"I passed?" She didn’t think so. Cixi misunderstood the King’s words. She confirmed her existence by pinching her own skin. How had she ended up in the company of a demon, and the lord of demons no less?

Would she really face eternal damnation for associating with Lucifer? Was he really here to claim her soul? The questions twisted in her mind, each one more unsettling than the last.

Is this why Cassian brought her here?

No!

Seeing Cixi’s breathing getting heavier, Cassian spoke. "He is only here to introduce himself. No one is taking you to hell." There was a pang of hurt in Cassian’s voice.

"Are you sure?" Cixi asked.

Cassian gave her single nod.

She stared at Lucifer. Her grey eyes moved over him slowly, not admiring this time but processing. From his polished shoes to the tailored suit to the golden hair tied in its immaculate bun to the intense, shifting eyes that watched her with the patient amusement of something eternal.

This was Lucifer.

The Lucifer. The one from the Bible. The one the preachers warned about. The one the Sunday school teacher had described with such certainty that six-year-old Cixi had pictured a monster with red skin and a pitchfork and hooves.

He did not have red skin. He did not have a pitchfork. He did not have hooves.

He had a tailored suit, golden hair, and a smile that could bring nations to their knees.

Was there really a Hell? An actual place beneath the ground, or beyond the sky, or wherever it existed, where souls travelled after death? Was there a throne in it? Did this man sit on that throne and decide things about people who had died? Was every sermon she had ever half-listened to in a church actually true?

She had just learned that demons were real by sitting next to one in a cave. And now the Devil’s King stood in front of her, smiling at her, after kissing her knuckles like a gentleman at a cocktail party.

A minute ago, her biggest problem was that she had shouted about Cassian making her crazy in bed.

And after meeting the king of hell, she was unsure what she had got herself into—willingly.